


the King is dead (long live the King!)

by Alemantele



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Infidelity, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 20:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4719068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alemantele/pseuds/Alemantele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three Kings will die in his lifetime, but Hamlet was never meant to rule.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the King is dead (long live the King!)

 

i. 

Hamlet is two when his grandfather dies.

Gertrude sits besides her husband, clutching onto his hand as she watches the physician lean over her father in law, Hamlet sitting uncharacteristically quiet in her lap.

When the news is delivered, everyone in the room falls silent. This is when Hamlet opens his mouth and wails. Gertrude feels a flush creeping up her neck and she picks her son up, patting his back and standing. Hamlet continues to cry, his sobs too loud as they echo in the still bedchamber. 

“The King is dead,” the physician murmurs, looking directly at her husband. Gertrude is the one who catches her husband’s eyes instead. 

Gertrude sweeps her skirts in a curtsy to him, still holding her son in one arm. “Long live the King,” she declares. Everyone in the room follows, and Gertrude allows herself a hard smile.

When she stands, she presses a kiss to her husband’s mouth before leaving the room, still patting Hamlet’s back as she goes.

She doesn’t think about how the babe in her arms is not her husband’s offspring and she does not find Claudius in his room that night.

She is the Queen now. 

Gertrude clutches Hamlet tighter and rocks him until his sobs quiet.

 

* * *

 

ii. 

“The King is dead!” the physician announces, croaking the words as if he could not quite believe it.

There is the physician and a group of anxious servants standing about in the room, but aside from that, it is only Claudius and Gertrude.

Claudius tries to hide his smile, standing by his brother’s corpse. Gertrude, still clad in her nightclothes, face white with shock, trembles at his side. Claudius does not reach out for her hand, though he dearly misses the feel of her smooth fingers in his. Instead, he reaches out and places a hand on the crown sitting by the Old King’s bed.

Gertrude raises a hand to her mouth, eyes widening. Claudius knows that she knows what he has done. He raises an eyebrow, as if asking if she were going to challenge him, now. 

Before Claudius can claim the crown for his own, Hamlet bursts into the room.

“Mother,” he says, voice almost calm.

Gertrude turns towards her son. “Hamlet, dear,” she says in reply, her voice thin and reedy.

“Is it true?” he asks coldly.

“Ay,” Gertrude confirms, her head falling. Her eyes flicker to the vision of her dead husband, but she quickly looks away.

“When?”

“He passed in the witching hours of night, my Lord,” the physician answers. “Alas, by dawn his Majesty had gone.” 

“How was it done?” Hamlet asks, and Claudius narrows his eyes. The boy is too shrewd for Claudius’s liking, too quickly too suspect.

 The physician shakes his head. “T’was the failure of his heart, my Lord,” he says softly.

Hamlet shakes his head forcibly. “My father, the _King,_ was strong of health.”

“Perhaps not, my Lord,” the physician tries again, feebly. “King Hamlet had many years of life yet.”

“Go to, nephew. Some rest will do you well,” Claudius says, putting a hand on Hamlet’s shoulder.

The glare his nephew gives is piercing, and Hamlet shrugs Claudius’s hand off with a violent disposition. Hamlet wrings his hands, running fingers through his dark hair, pacing the room to and fro with an angered frenzy.

“My Lady,” Claudius murmurs, turning towards Gertrude, “who is to claim the crown now?”

The room falls into silence. Hamlet has stopped in his pacing.

Gertrude turns her head from Hamlet and then back to Claudius. Claudius still has his hand on the crown by the bed.

“My father was King,” Hamlet says. “It is my birthright.”

“Your mother the Queen has yet to pass, nephew,” Claudius returns, his smile bright.

Another silence.

Gertrude looks down at her skirts, and Claudius remembers when she first came to him, wild with passion and perhaps something more in her eyes. He thought her the world, then. Now, Claudius wonders if she still has that old spark left in her, if perhaps years of marriage with his pathetic brother has dulled her passion.

“The King is dead,” Gertrude says again, as if lost in a memory. She puts her hand over Claudius’s on the crown, giving him a hesitant smile. “Long live the King.”

 When Claudius laughs triumphantly and they place the crown together on his head, Hamlet leaves the room in a furious flurry of footsteps.

Claudius pays him no mind—Hamlet would be easy enough to deal with in the months following.

“We are to be wed by the fortnight’s end,” Claudius announces.

A messenger scrambles from the room, presumably to spread the news. Claudius only grabs Gertrude by the waist and pulls her close, trying to remember their youth.

 

* * *

 

iii.

Horatio sits with his back to the wall, eyes unfocused, trying to breathe.

He answers Fortinbras’s questions dully. Everything is too loud in this damned hall.

“There is none to rule Denmark,” Fortinbras finally says, after all but two of the bodies have been carried away. Horatio finds himself aware of standing by Fortinbras’s side, looking down at Hamlet and Claudius as they lie, too still.

Horatio dips his head in a shallow nod. “The King is dead,” he says, unsure of whom he was speaking about. He had said goodbye to his Prince, not his King, and Horatio knew that Hamlet never wanted for the throne.

Besides the King’s dead body lies the crown, as if cast aside.

Horatio bends to pick it up, careful with the heavy gold, fingertips feeling numb even now.

He offers it to Fortinbras, who takes it wordlessly. There was no one left to rule. Hamlet’s father is long dead, Claudius is dead, and Horatio knew that Hamlet was never meant to rule. There is only Fortinbras now. 

When Fortinbras smiles with the deadly grace of a monarch and sits on the throne, Horatio kneels at his feet. “Long live the King,” he declares, and casts one last look at his fallen Prince—and friend—before standing and leaving the hall.


End file.
